I fear that this letter can be of no use to you, but it will serve to show my sympathy and good wishes in your researches.
| To A. R. Wallace. |
| Down, April 29th [1867]. |
I have been greatly interested by your letter, but your view is not new to me. If you will look at p. 240 of the fourth edition of the Origin you will find it very briefly given with two extreme examples of the peacock and black grouse. A more general statement is given at p. 101, or at p. 89 of the first edition, for I have long entertained this view, though I have never had space to develop it. But I had not sufficient knowledge to generalise as far as you do about colouring and nesting. In your paper perhaps you will just allude to my scanty remark in the fourth edition, because in my Essay on Man I intend to discuss the whole subject of sexual selection, explaining as I believe it does much with respect to man. I have collected all my old notes, and partly written my discussion, and it would be flat work for me to give the leading idea as exclusively from you. But, as I am sure from your greater knowledge of Ornithology and Entomology that you will write a much better discussion than I could, your paper will be of great use to me. Nevertheless I must discuss the subject fully in my Essay on Man. When we met at the Zoological Society, and I asked you about the sexual differences in kingfishers, I had this subject in view; as I had when I suggested to Bates the difficulty about gaudy caterpillars, which you have so admirably (as I believe it will prove) explained. I have got one capital case (genus forgotten) of a [Australian] bird in which the female has long tail-plumes, and which consequently builds a different nest from all her allies. With respect to certain female birds being more brightly coloured than the males, and the latter incubating, I have gone a little into the subject, and can not say that I am fully satisfied. I remember mentioning to you the case of Rhyncliæa, but its nesting seems unknown. In some other cases the difference in brightness seemed to me hardly sufficiently accounted for by the principle of protection. At the Falkland Islands there is a carrion hawk in which the female (as I ascertained by dissection) is the brightest coloured, and I doubt whether protection will here apply; but I wrote several months ago to the Falklands to make enquiries. The conclusion to which I have been leaning is that in some of these abnormal cases the colour happened to vary in the female alone, and was transmitted to females alone, and that her variations have been selected through the admiration of the male.
It is a very interesting subject, but I shall not be able to go on with it for the next five or six months, as I am fully employed in cor-
